1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display device, and, more particularly, to a plasma display device that includes a cover plate to efficiently dissipate the heat produced by a driver IC.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a plasma display apparatus is a device where images are displayed on a plasma display panel (simply referred to hereinafter as the “PDP”) using the plasma generated through the gas discharging.
With the plasma display apparatus, heat is generated during the process of discharging the gas in the PDP to generate plasma. When the degree of gas discharging is heightened to enhance the luminance, more heat is generated from the PDP.
The heat induced by the gas discharging is conducted to the chassis base, and affects the driving circuit mounted at the backside of the chassis base so that the driving circuit may make unstable signal processing while inducing the mis-operation of the integrated circuit for processing the electrical signals with the driving of the PDP. Moreover, in case the mis-operation degree of the driving circuit or the integrated circuit is extremely high, black stripes may be made on the screen, deteriorating the display screen quality.
Accordingly, it is necessary to dissipate the heat generated from the PDP to the outside. With the common heat dissipation technique, the PDP is attached to the chassis base formed with a material having an excellent thermal conductivity. A heat sink, such as a heat dissipation sheet, is disposed between the PDP and the chassis base. As a result, the heat generated from the PDP is dissipated to the outside of the display device via the heat sink and the chassis base.
The plasma display panel has electrodes that are electrically connected to a driving circuit, and a driver IC supplies voltage signals to the electrodes in accordance with signals output by the driving circuit.
Voltage application structures using a driver IC include a Chip-On-Board (COB) structure where the driver IC is mounted on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and a Chip-On-Film (COF) structure where the driver IC is directly mounted on a Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) film. A small-sized and low cost Tape Carrier Package (TCP) is now being extensively used as a voltage application structure.
In order to express at least a 256 gray scale with a plasma display panel, at least eight-timed address discharges must occur during 1/60 of a second corresponding to one TV field, and hence, a considerable amount of heat is generated by the COF, the COB, or the TCP mounted on the chassis base.
Accordingly, a reinforcing plate is provided with the COB or the COF to reinforce its structural intensity integrity and fix it to the chassis base. The reinforcing plate further has a role of a heat sink to dissipate the heat generated by the IC to the outside.
A heat sink is used in order to dissipate the heat produced by the TCP driver IC. The heat sink that is used can be a solid heat dissipating sheet attached to the TCP to dissipate the heat into the air. However, such a heat sink has the low heat dissipation efficiency. Therefore, there is a problem in that the heat sink must be large relative to the size of the driver IC to dissipate the large amount of heat generated by the TCP driver IC.